Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – Consumers decreased their credit card debt by 11 percent last year, with the average debt load declining in every state.

That information came from a report released Tuesday by credit tracking and financial education website CreditKarma.com. It analyzed data from more than 300,000 of its users.

“The new year typically inspires consumers to get in control of their finances, especially after the bout of holiday spending that occurred in December. Starting in January, you’ll see consumers start focusing on decreasing debt,” said Ken Lin, CEO of CreditKarma.com.

CreditKarma.com found that the average credit card balance was $6,576 in 2011, down from $7,404 the previous year.

However, that decline came in a climate of weak consumer confidence, which kept spending down as banks continued to tighten lending while slashing credit limits for many existing customers.

While credit card debt was down, so were credit scores.

Nationally, credit scores fell eight points to 660 in 2011 from the previous year.

States with the highest average credit scores are:

• California, Massachusetts and New Jersey — 679
• Washington — 675
• New York — 674

States with the lowest average credit scores are:

• Mississippi — 622
• Louisiana — 635
• Arkansas — 635
• South Carolina — 635
• West Virginia — 637

View full post on Personal Finance Stories

Charlotte, NC, United States (AHN) – Credit unions are benefiting from a hike on debit card fees imposed by Bank of America (BofA )on Sept. 29. They are taking advantage of the growing anti-bank sentiment across the country as evidenced by the Occupy Wall Street movements.

Another proof is the big jump in applications experienced by some credit unions for membership. In September, the National Association of Federal Credit Unions logged a 350 percent increase in Web traffic to its online credit union locator.

Besides capitalizing on the anti-bank sentiments, credit unions are highlighting their advantages such as no checking and debit card fee, no minimum balance requirements and quarterly paid dividends.

The advantage credit unions and community banks with less than $10 billion in assets have compared to banks are that these establishments are exempt from a new government rule that cut interchange of swipe fees which led banks to impose new fees.

Besides BofA, Suntrust also tacked in fees on debit cards, while Citibank phased out its free checking accounts.

To give the shift from banks to credit unions a bigger push, a Facebook group marked Nov. 5 as Bank Transfer Day when depositors are encouraged to close their bank accounts and transfer their savings to credit unions to avoid escalating bank fees.

This early, BofA is rethinking its plan to charge $5 a month for the use of their debit cards, according to reports. Although bank officials said there is no firm conclusion yet, a new plan being hatched would exempt customers who hold BofA credit cards, directly deposit their pay into the bank or hold a minimum balance from the $5 fee.

Previously, BofA said the fee would only be waived if the debit card holder has a minimum balance of $20,000.

The cardholder backlash is also causing other banks to reconsider plans to impose a fee. Wells Fargo canceled on Friday a test that would charge debit cardholders from Georgia, Nevada, New Mexico, Washington and Oregon $3 a month. JPMorgan also decided against imposing a $3 stand-alone debit card use fee per month.

U.S. banks are estimated to lose $6 billion from the mandated reduction in swipe fees.

View full post on Personal Finance Stories

LITTLE ROCK – While U.S. Sens. John Boozman and Mark Pryor were home from Washington last week, an ad was running on Arkansas radio stations urging them to vote against delaying a federal law that would limit fees that banks charge to process transactions involving debit and credit cards.

View full post on All Stories

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) – The percentage of banks in the United States expressing a willingness to make consumer loans rose in the first quarter to its highest level since 1994, according to a survey released by the Federal Reserve on Monday. The Fed’s Senior Loan Officer Survey for January through March also found that several large banks eased lending policies on credit cards and auto loans. Consumers increased their demand for auto loans but not other types, the survey found. The trend toward easier standards and terms for commercial and industrial loans also continued in the first quarter, the survey found. The banks that eased standards on business loans cited increased competition and a less uncertain economic outlook. Demand for business loans also increased.

Market Pulse Stories are Rapid-fire, short news bursts on stocks and markets as they move. Visit MarketWatch.com for more information on this news.

View full post on All Stories

The Dec. 14 subpoena obtained by the U.S. Department of Justice said the records sought from the microblogging website were “relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation.”

A U.S. court has ordered Twitter to hand over details of the accounts of WikiLeaks and several supporters as part of a criminal investigation into the release of hundreds of thousands of confidential documents.

The Dec. 14 subpoena obtained by the U.S. Department of Justice and published by online magazine Salon.com on Friday said the records sought from the microblogging website were “relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation.”

It ordered Twitter to provide account information on WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and Bradley Manning, the U.S. Army intelligence analyst suspected of leaking Pentagon documents made public last year by WikiLeaks.

The information sought by the government includes all connection records and session times, IP addresses used to access Twitter, email and residential addresses plus billing records and details of bank accounts and credit cards.

The subpoena included the accounts of WikiLeaks supporters Jacob Appelbaum, Rop Gonggrijp and Birgitta Jonsdottir, a former WikiLeaks volunteer and member of Iceland’s parliament.

“WikiLeaks strongly condemns this harassment of individuals by the U.S. government,” Assange’s lawyer, Mark Stephens, said in a statement issued in London.

The U.S. government is examining whether criminal charges can be brought against Assange for helping to make public hundreds of thousands of confidential U.S. diplomatic cables that embarrassed Washington and several of its allies.

Stephens said three of the four individuals targeted by the Department of Justice had never worked for WikiLeaks and were private citizens who supported WikiLeaks voluntarily as activists or politicians.

Two of them were instrumental in helping WikiLeaks make public the Pentagon video that showed a U.S. helicopter crew firing on Iraqi civilians, Stephens said. WikiLeaks is instructing its U.S. lawyers to oppose the subpoena, he added.

Jonsdottir said she was seeking legal advice and had spoken to Iceland’s minister of justice, who is looking into the case.

“I have nothing to hide and have done nothing wrong — I have no intention to hand my information over willingly to DoJ (Department of Justice),” Jonsdottir wrote on Twitter.

The subpoena gave Twitter Inc three days to provide the records and ordered the San Francisco-based company not to inform the users under investigation.

A federal judge unsealed the order on Jan. 5 after Twitter requested the right to inform the people involved.

Stephens said this legal action by Twitter had made public the existence of a criminal investigation of WikiLeaks.

The lawyer called on Facebook and Google to unseal any similar subpoenas requesting information about WikiLeaks.

Washington has accused WikiLeaks of acting without regard for the safety of those named in the cables, which contained candid remarks and assessments of foreign leaders and governments.

The State Department said on Friday it has warned several hundred people worldwide it believes may be imperiled by the release and has helped a handful of them relocate to safer places.

View full post on All Stories

WASHINGTON, Nov. 1 (UPI) — Theft of banking information at points consumers swipe their debit and credit cards could rise as the economy falters, a bank trade group spokeswoman said.

View full post on All Stories

Bank of America is going on a hiring spree, with plans to add more than 1,000 small-business bankers across the U.S. by early 2012. The Charlotte-based bank will start by beefing up its small business departments in Dallas, Los Angeles, Baltimore and Washington, D.C. this quarter, it said in a statement Thursday. The new hires won’t just be loan officers — they’ll specialize in developing relationships with mom-and-pop shops and managing products for them such as bank accounts, payroll systems, pension plans, and credit cards (and of course, loans). “Small businesses play a critical role in driving innovation and growth in our economy,” Brian Moynihan, the bank’s president and chief executive, said in a statement. The bank announced its plans during meetings with business leaders in Boston. Bank of America also said it is on track to “blow away” its goal of increasing lending to small businesses by $5 billion this year. It currently has about 4 million small-business customers, or 12 percent of the market. (It’s not the only bank courting small businesses: J.P. Morgan Chase has promised to increase its lending to small firms by $4 billion, and in June began offering discounts to companies that hire.)

The Obama administration has called multiple times for extending aid to small businesses to boost economic recovery and jump-start hiring. But lending to small businesses dipped 1.8 percent during the third quarter compared with a year ago, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Last month, Congress passed a bill – now signed into law – aimed at providing small businesses with easier access to credit. The aid package includes a $30 billion lending fund to be distributed by the Treasury Department to qualified small banks that promise to extend new loans to small business.

View full post on All Stories

Associated Press WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve signaled Tuesday that it’s worried about the weakness of the recovery and is ready to take further steps to boost the economy if needed.

View full post on Business Stories

Washington, DC, United States (AHN) – Two-thirds of travelers are angered and surprised by hidden airlines fees, according to a survey conducted by a trio of travel agencies.

The Consumer Travel Alliance (CTA), Business Travel Coalition (BTC) and American Society of Travel Agents (ASTA) found the last minute fees that prompted anger included charges for services such as checked baggage, advance seating and priority boarding.

“As we come to the end of one of the busiest air travel periods of the year, millions of Americans are returning from their summer vacations tanned, rested, and mad as hell,” said Kevin Mitchell, chairman of the Business Travel Coalition. “They are tired of arriving at the airport and finding huge unexpected costs for travel services they thought were part of the ticket price.

Conducted over the two weeks before Labor Day, the survey of 1,396 travelers found:

Two-thirds (66 percent) of respondents said they had been surprised at the airport by unexpected fees for things such as checking bags, requesting a seat assignment, getting extra legroom, or flying standby.

Nearly a third (29 percent) said they were surprised often or nearly every time they travel via air by such fees.

Nearly two-thirds (65 percent) said such fees placed some or a great deal of unexpected financial strain on their budget for the trip, while more than a quarter (26 percent) said that those fees placed a great deal of unexpected strain.

— A nearly unanimous 99% of respondents said that they think airlines should be required to disclose all of their fees in advance on every website that sells airline tickets.

— When asked to rank the fees they found most annoying, respondents rated carry-on baggage fees the most annoying, with 91% calling those fees “very annoying,” followed by seat reservation fees (88% very

annoying), checked baggage fees (74%), and telephone reservation fees (67%).

Consumer travel advocates regard the hidden fees as a violation of a traveler’s most basic right- to know how much they will have to pay for their trip.

Charlie Leocha, President of the Consumer Travel Alliance. “When two out of every three air travelers say they have been surprised by hidden fees at the airport, you know the current system is broken and needs to be fixed. Airlines should have to share their fees with every traveler, through every ticketing channel in which they participate, to every point of sale.”

View full post on All Stories

The Washington Redskins official team logo is now being proudly displayed on the NFL Extra Points™ Platinum Plus® Visa® Credit Card from Bank of America.  (www.redskinscreditcard.com).   This rewards credit card has proven to be a touchdown with fans across the country and has made huge strides in the rewards credit card industry.  Like many retailers, universities and airlines have done for decades, NFL football teams, in association with Bank of America, now offer credit card consumers valuable rewards above and beyond the cool factor of having their favorite team printed on their credit cards.  These football-oriented credit cards are scoring big with sports fans in every state.

The NFL Extra Points™ Platinum Plus® Visa®™ Credit Card from Bank of America has important features, which include:

•           No Annual Fee.

•           0% Introductory Annual Percentage Rate (APR) on balance transfers and cash advance checks for your first 12 billing cycles.

•           A $50 NFLshop.com gift card after your first qualifying transaction(s) using your NFL Extra Points™ Visa® Credit Card.

•           100% fraud protection

•           Earn 1 Point for every dollar you spend in net retail purchases. Points are redeemable for NFL merchandise, tickets, and VIP passes to NFL experiences.

•           Online account access and Points management.

At a time when consumers are nervous about the uncertainty in the stock market, illiquidity in the credit market and the softening real estate market, one thing remains constant – sports fans love NFL football.  Historically, football has given its fans something to believe in and something to hope for, particularly during difficult economic times.   With the NFL Extra Points™ Platinum Plus® Visa®™ credit card, Redskins fans can be reminded of their favorite team every time they open their wallets.  Real fans carry the card with pride.  Visit www.redskinscreditcard.com to complete the credit card application online in just a few short minutes.

http://www.articlesbase.com/football-articles/washington-redskins-credit-card-nfl-extra-points-platinum-plus-visa-618460.html